


Stop Believing, Start Knowing

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 3 Rise of the Guardians Rarepair Fics [3]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 14:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20818742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Older cupcake still believing in the Guardians and seeing jack from time to time, who likes to bring food when visiting, because bigger women with healthy appetites are a turn on for him on. And when cupcake finds out she has kinky food sex with him :)"Well, I can tell that this prompt was looking for fun smut. Unfortunately this fill has a lot of introspection and Jack has weird memory issues around his believers.This is because at some point I stopped being able to let go of the fact that while Jack looks like a teenage boy, he isn’t one. At all.Cupcake is a freshman in college here.





	Stop Believing, Start Knowing

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on 1/27/2016.

“You know, I never thought you’d keep visiting me,” Cupcake says. As far as she knows, to everyone else on campus she’d look like she was talking to thin air. Luckily enough, she’d gotten the single room she requested, and still more luckily, no one really questioned why she had been so happy about it. It hadn’t even come up in her brief conversations with the other kids who had seen Jack that Easter he became a Guardian. They’d grown apart, and, well, they all seemed to have secrets, but she didn’t know if any of their secrets were “I still see Jack”.  
  
She’d brought up the subject to Jack, once—surely he’d know—but he’d told her that he honestly wasn’t sure. When he was around people who believed in him, he’d explained, he had a lot of trouble thinking or remembering outside the present moment. With kids, it helped him treat them as they wanted to be treated, and to be more open to their ideas of fun. With someone like Cupcake—he’d been embarrassed, then—it kept him from having a real, grown-up conversation. No, it’s all right, she’d reassured him. Having him around made it hard for her to think outside the present moment, too.  
  
Then she’d quickly changed the subject. She knew that Jack wouldn’t laugh at her at that moment, but when he was away from her, and he started thinking more clearly, she didn’t want him to think she’d meant anything by that. She didn’t want him to be creeped out and stop visiting.  
  
Because it was sort of sad, the way she needed Jack. The way she needed Jack because she was pretty sure if the others didn’t still see him, and she told them she did, they would think she was lying. Because she wasn’t the sort of girl touched by lingering magic, was she?  
  
“Why not?” Jack asks, pulling her out of her reverie with a grin, and she doesn’t want to be honest, now, she can’t be honest for a pretty teenage boy if she wants him to stick around for even a minute or two more.  
  
But then again, Jack isn’t really a teenage boy.  
  
“Because I’m not a magical type of girl,” she says. It surprises her, how it doesn’t feel so bad to say that to Jack. Maybe it’s because this is something Jack must already know. But it’s still _there_ dragging along all its accompanying thoughts. How she’s too girly in what she likes, not girly enough in what she looks like. How she never mastered defenses that weren’t just plain offense. Sometimes it feels like Jack’s the only one she’s ever been able to relax around, and even that hasn’t been totally true, lately.  
  
Maybe she shouldn’t relax around him. He’s not human anymore, and he looks younger than her, now. Just a little, but soon to be more.  
  
“If I was a magical type of girl, we wouldn’t be meeting in my dorm room just to hang out and share a box of doughnuts,” she goes on.  
  
“Hey, I take a lot of teasing from North to get these,” Jack says. “I think I don’t protest more because I know what he’s saying is pretty much true.”  
  
“What does he say?” Cupcake asks, digging her fingers into the pillow she’s holding in front of her.  
  
“Don’t remember,” Jack says after a moment, looking away. He shakes his head. “This is ridiculous. I’m always glad that I remember to come visit you, but while I’m here—” He looks back to Cupcake, and she thinks he’s going to fly away, but he scoots closer instead. “What would it take for you to stop believing in me?” he asks.  
  
“What? I would never do that, not now, not after all these years—”  
  
“Oh, no, no, that’s not what I meant,” Jack says. “I’m normal around the Guardians because they know me, and think of me as a person. You think of me_like_ a person, but you still believe in me as Jack Frost, Guardian of Childhood. Like saying you should be a magical type of girl for me to be around you. But you’re really a young woman. So what would it take for you to think of me as more than a Guardian of Childhood. To know me, and to know that nothing about this needs to be childish.”  
  
“Is that—is that really what you want?” Cupcake asked. She felt her cheeks heating up. “I had an idea but”—but you, you beautiful boy—“I don’t think you’ll like it.”  
  
Jack’s smile is a little shy, now. “You know that’s the kind of thing you can’t hide from me. But as for liking it, you don’t even know—” he reaches out and takes her hand. “Now you do. I’m not cold.”  
  
Cupcake swallows hard. “If you can tell what I was thinking because of your powers, you might only be…entertaining this idea because of them. I mean, I’m…” she doesn’t want to keep talking.  
  
“You’re beautiful, and I’m not the one in danger, here,” Jack says.  
  
He’s right about the second part. She knows that. He’s three hundred years old, with abilities and powers that defy every law of physics she’s learned. He’s immortal. He could fly away. But he hasn’t. And since the second part is true, she wants to believe the first part, too. No one better than Jack will say it.  
  
She doesn’t let go of his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Tags and Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> #what is following the prompt? we just don't know
> 
> tejoxys answered: Aw, Cupcake. This hurts my heart. :( Lots of interesting implications in this fill.


End file.
